Microsoft shares defy massive global outage, close higher on Friday; Outlook, Teams services recover - Things to know

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Microsoft restored Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services after a global outage lasting more than 24 hours and affecting users in over 70 countries. Microsoft ruled out a cyberattack; its shares closed nearly flat.

Microsoft shares showed resilience on Wall Street, recovering from an early pre-market decline to end marginally higher on Friday, even as the technology giant grappled with one of the longest global service disruptions in its history. The outage, which affected workplace communications across more than 70 countries for over 24 hours, initially triggered investor concerns but failed to sustain pressure on the stock.

Microsoft shares had fallen around 2.5% to 3% in pre-market trading as the disruption entered its second day and uncertainty grew over when services would return to normal. However, the stock recovered during the session and closed nearly flat, up 0.17% at $523.88. The shares have gained roughly 8% so far this year.

The recovery came as Microsoft rolled out measures to stabilise its systems before confirming on Saturday, November 14, that services had been fully restored across Outlook, Teams, Copilot and the broader Microsoft 365 suite. The market reaction suggested that investors were treating the incident as a temporary operational setback, although the disruption has renewed questions about the dependence of businesses on a handful of major technology providers.

Microsoft said on Saturday that it had completed efforts to address the underlying issue and restored services for the remaining affected customers and regions.

"We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions," the company said in a post on X.

The company apologised for the inconvenience caused and said email backlogs had cleared, with service health returning to normal across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. It also said it would continue monitoring enterprise systems to identify and address any residual issues.

"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners.

The outage affected Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 products, including the Copilot…

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